[murk]

SO a friend of mine is making a site and they're having some difficulties with designing a skin. They'd like to know what a member/admin/guest would prefer seeing when looking at a site for the first time.

A few questions are:
- cbox fixed on the side or bottom?
- should it toggle if on the side?
- what side should a cbox go on?
- left right or center aligned forum?

also maybe just posting what your ideal site would look like would be nice. ;u; thanks.

[Kuroya]

side cboxes always feel way too squished, so my vote is bottom.

toggle cboxes tend to cover stuff so i'm not fond of them

whichever side works? i mean... i go more for where the eye flows than "i like this side" so where the eye's drawn naturally to the box, put it there

uhhh.... again, go with how you're going to have it flow best? sorry i'm not much help with this part orz

[beekeeper]

idrc if it's side or bottom, but yes, it needs to toggle if it's side otherwise things will be squished at best and unusable at worse for us w lil screens. personally i like cboxes on the right because you know how you look at stuff left to right? less distraction from the forum itself i think.

alignment, i like center. that might just be personal preference. but i also imagines side alignment can get awkward on bigger screens??

also something v important to me is having the design be accessible. obviously like... visually with fonts that we can read but also for people w shitty internet...... please... think of us..... if your site takes like 8 minutes to load i'm not fucking using it

[real]

i'm a pretty tough customer. i love cboxes that are on the side because they're right there but hate it if they don't have toggle because i will be looking at the site with 10% magnification. sides don't really matter to me.

but tbh to me it really doesn't matter if a cbox is on the side or at the bottom, it doesn't really make or break the decision of joining the site imo. (unless it's a side cbox with no toggle, then that breaks the decision for me, sorry for all the sites that don't have toggle enabled lol)

[Wolf]

For me, if it's a choice between a skin with a cbox at the side or a cbox at the bottom, I'd go with the latter hands down. It distracts me to have a cbox on the side, even if it has toggle. I agree with Kuroya that cboxes at the side look squished and cover up things.

Yes, toggle is good. It minimises distraction when I'm working on posts.

I have no preference about which side.

I prefer centre aligned since I'm one of those people with big screens. When a forum is aligned too far to the right/left and it has a narrow width, then that leaves me with a large amount of awkward negative space.

[SEADRA]

ur q's don't matter to me, i'm game for any of those (i pers. prefer not having a toggle cbox, esp. if it's wide enough that it goes over the main forum like pls fix that). but things i look for (exceptions may apply pls don't take any of this literally):

- not wide enough that i have to have a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom (pet peeve - a lot of ppl have a 13'' screen like r u kidding me with ur 2000000px wide skin designs wtf ppl)
- relatively nice color scheme
- professional-looking / clean overall design
- (generally) center-aligned but if the design is good it can be to either side
- light color scheme (unless site calls far dark scheme ofc but i gravitate towards light skins)
- if ur site has approx 8000 boards and ur cbox is at the bottom pls put a scroll to bottom button so it's easier to get there (i pers. like cbox being at the bottom it gives me a reason to look at the info center)
- TEXT LINKS THAT DO SOMETHING WHEN YOU HOVER SO I KNOW IF I'M ACTUALLY CLICKING THEM (color, do aerial flips, something)

[PEARL]

What I look for in a skin is whether or not it is polished. I hate skins that are unfinished or is just all over the place in terms of design. Repetitiveness is great. When you use a style or color for one element on the board, it is good to use it over and over again. There needs to be some contrast but also all of it making sense. If you use a catbg color for one board. It would be good to use it for the titlebg as well.

[Wizard♦]

What I'm looking for is really good graphics, I mean you are trying to sell a site to a person and if you have some really nice badazz graphics then people will stay. It's all about the image you are trying to show to the public and planet EARTH!!!.